Aerogels are unique solids with up to 99% porosity. Such large porosities confer a number of useful properties to aerogels, including high surface area, low refractive index, low dielectric constant, low thermal-loss coefficient, and low sound velocity. However, the potential of aerogels has not generally been realized because conventional supercritical aerogel processing is energy intensive and conventional aerogels lack durability. Furthermore, most superhydrophobic coatings contain fluorine which can be environmentally unfriendly and may not be cost effective to manufacture.
Thus, there is a need to overcome these and other problems of the prior art and to provide durable and inexpensive superhydrophobic polymer-aerogel coating.